The novel presents a contrast between ART and LIFE.
Art is the expression of BEAUTY and FORM, while the main characteristics of Life are UGLINESS and SHAPELESSNESS.
Lord Henry encourages Dorian to treat his own life as if it were a WORK OF ART and to live fully and completely but at the same time to remain detached from it.
Here's a paradox: he must be involved and uninvolved, take part and remain a spectator of the event of life in order to comìntemplate beauty.
This contrast is particularly evident when Dorian walks to the theatre where Sybil Vane performs (chapter 4)
According to Wilde the purpose of Art is to show BEAUTY and to have no purpose (look at the epigrams in the Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray) and he stated that in a period when art was used as a tool for social education and moral enlightment by the victorian writers such as Dickens.
Instead, the Aesthetic movement sought to free art from this responsability.
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